[CentOS] Backup methods for an Oracle DB

Mon Jan 26 19:56:07 UTC 2009
Ugo Bellavance <ugob at lubik.ca>

nate a écrit :
> Ugo Bellavance wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> 	I've been testing different methods and I'd like to have some advice.
>> I want to perform a cold backup once a week on the Oracle DB, and put it
>> on tape.  I'm using EMC Networker for backup software, and I am not too
>> at ease with the fact of doing eveything with Networker, because if
>> there is a problem with the backup, the Oracle DB might not come up
>> after the backup run.
> 
> What version and edition of Oracle?

Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.x.x.x - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning and Data Mining options

> Use RMAN, that's what it's there for. You can backup online, or
> offline, full or incremental.

Well, we only use one main oracle server... the DBA says it is not worth 
the additionnal overhead.  I'm no Oracle guru.

> At my last company we ran Oracle 10gR2 standard edition connected to
> a small fiber channel SAN. I wrote a script that put the tables on the
> primary server in hotbackup mode, then snapshotted the Oracle volumes,
> and mounted the snapshots onto a virtual machine that was running
> software iSCSI. From there a job kicked off and ran RMAN to backup
> the database.

Ok, but is that the equivalent of doing a cold backup?

> Prior to that we ran enterprise edition and was able to run RMAN
> directly from the physical standby server. With standard edition
> you can't do that.

Ok

> The migration from Oracle EE to Oracle SE probably paid for the
> SAN in itself let alone the massive increases in productivity
> gained by the flexibility of a centralized storage system(copying
> production data went from ~2 days to about 1 hour, copying data
> to reporting database went from ~8 hours to ~10 minutes).
> 
> You can also run RMAN against the primary system as well(any edition
> I believe), though I didn't want to do that as it'd impact
> performance.

We don't really care about the performance, as we are ok with up to 
about 2 hours of complete downtime per week.

Thanks,